Jim was the first boy to reaxch the top năm 2024

The first American to summit Mt. Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, was Jim Whittaker, but it was in 1963, 10 years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquered the peak. Back then, climbing wasn’t as popular in the U.S. as it was in Europe and Asia, so American funding was scarce. Still, the event was a major achievement, as Whittaker was only the 10th person to the 29,035-foot summit. Compare that with today, when the top has been visited thousands of times.

After a stint as CEO of Recreational Equipment Inc., Whittaker, now 87, led the first successful American team to K2, the world’s second-highest mountain. In 1990, he helped put a Russian, a Chinese and an American together atop Everest as leader of the famous “International Peace Climb,” one of his proudest moments. Following are edited excerpts from an interview conducted awhile back at The Explorers Club in New York.

Jim Clash: You're on those big 8,000-meter peaks for months at a time. What keeps you sane?

Jim Whittaker: One of our science studies was psychological. A guy kept asking what our dreams were. The No. 1 dream of the team: green salads. No. 2, women! Now that was the average, and doesn’t necessarily indicate what I dreamt about. Later, when you come off the mountain from the thin air, you can feel the "softness" of the thicker air. I noticed our group had stopped ahead to gather in a circle around something on the ground. I’m wondering just what’s going on. They’re looking at a blade of grass -- emerald green, beautiful! It was stunning because we had seen no color and nothing living up there for so long. Next someone says, "Hey, there’s a flower." They were literally crying, glad to be back on this magical Earth, back to where there’s life. You realize every day is a gift.

JC: In mountaineering, teamwork is important. In 1963, just a few people from your big expedition made the top -- including you and your Sherpa, Nawang Gombu. The leader, Norman Dyhrenfurth, didn’t even summit.

JW: Yes, that was a team thing. I was lucky enough to do the “slam dunk,” but there were 19 Americans, plus all the Sherpas, who busted their butts to get somebody to Earth’s highest point. If you’re going to have a successful expedition, the team has to get at least one person up there. A lot of people know they can’t get to the top, but still make the necessary carries between camps to get the equipment up the mountain. Without all of them, we never would have been successful.

JC: You failed on K2 the first time, in 1975. Three years later your expedition made the top. What is it about that peak?

JW: As [Winston] Churchill said: “Victory is sweetest to those who have known defeat.” K2 is called the savage mountain. The storms there are incredible. So the biggest problems are with the weather. Also, there are no Sherpas like on Everest, so you have to shuttle your own gear back and forth.

JC: Your '63 Everest triumph obviously defines you. But I’ve heard that the International Peace Climb in 1990 was also fulfilling for you.

JW: We thought, what can we do that would be a worthwhile payback to the world? What’s the biggest threat? Nuclear war. And who has the most bombs? The Soviets, the Chinese and the Americans. Why don’t we form a team, get these guys together and stand on Earth’s highest point with their arms around each other demonstrating friendship and co-operation. We’d be roped up to these guys, trusting our lives to each other. Of course, everyone said, “You’ll never be able to do it.” My first contributor was [former L.L. Bean chairman] Leon Gorman. I was at an outdoor retailer thing, telling him about my idea and, before I could finish, he had pulled out a check for $100,000 and said, “Here -- go for it!” In the end, we put two Soviets, two Chinese and two Americans up there. One was the first Soviet woman. She said, “I stand on the summit of this mountain for all the women of the world. Let there be no borders on this planet. Let us make this a safe and clean world for our children and their children.” When she went home, [Mikhail] Gorbachev gave her the highest award a Soviet civilian can get. It was a wonderful thing.

JC: You’re 6’5” and have knocked off the world’s baddest peaks. Tell me something about your softer side.

JW: When I was 12 years old, I got a bow and arrow for Christmas. I went out to the forest and saw this owl about 40 feet up in a tree. I pulled back, and my arrow went right through the owl’s chest. It came tumbling down at my feet. Excited, I went running back to my house, three blocks away, with this dead owl. My mother looked at it and said, “Oh, the poor thing.” I burst into tears, went out to bury it and have never killed a thing since.

See more of Jim Whittaker in this video and portrait gallery. Read more about the state of Mount Everest in the June issue of National Geographic.

The first time I met 84-year-old Jim Whittaker, a giant both in height (6’5″) and spirit, he was literally throwing around the heavy (and sharp) ice ax he used to become the first American to plant a U.S. flag on Mount Everest’s summit. At a small gathering in Salt Lake City, Utah, he challenged that we needed to “get the bastards outside” by educating them and sharing the value of being connected to nature. He raved about his summit partner, Nawang Gombu, “a prince of a man” with whom he was lifelong friends. Each additional encounter with Jim—and there have been many as we honor the 50th anniversary of that expedition—has been just as memorable, humorous, and kind spirited.

After the 1963 American Everest Expedition, Jim, a national hero, continued to define his life in the mountains and the outdoors—and even was the CEO of REI. The expedition is credited with inspiring an interest in mountaineering and the outdoors in Americans like never before. Many of today’s current outdoor industry leaders wax poetically about how, as kids, they read Tom Hornbein’s book The West Ridge or had posters of the 1963 American Everest Expedition on their bedroom walls. That’s hefty gift to our country—and one that we need to keep sharing, because, as Jim says: “If they love it, they will take care if it.”

Here Whittaker answers a few questions—and gives me a pretty sizable homework assignment.

Adventure: What would you say are three of the best outdoor adventures in the U.S.?

Jim Whittaker: I’d have to say Mount Rainier…

A: How many times have you climbed Mount Rainer?

J.W.: 80.

A: Wow, that’s almost once for every year of your life.

J.W.: But I guided through college. It was an opportunity for people who had never climbed before to go up on that mountain with a guide. You roped up with that person, so if they fell, they could kill you, so you would teach them as much as you knew.

A: What else?

J.W.: Some of the most beautiful places are in the parks. I’d say Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. And then I’d say the ocean. There are a lot of ocean beaches. That’s an easy one for people to get to.

A: What do you like to do when you are at the beach?

J.W.: Everything. I like to lie in the sun, but I’ve sailed a boat with my wife, Dianne, and our sons from here in Port Townsend, Washington, to Australia and back. We sailed down the coast and across to the Marquesas, then to Tahiti, and all the way down to Australia. It took four years. I love the water. And the boys were 11 and 13. I took them out of school. Joss graduated from Brown with honors. And Leif graduated from Western Washington with honors. People said, aren’t you afraid of pirates and stuff? And our answer was: Do you know how dangerous middle school is these days?

That’s an easy one. People can get to the beaches and oceans. And if there’s a marina they can get on a boat for a little bit. Just to see the fish and the clear water. It’s a whole new world.

I dive, our whole family dives. I have been down to 180 feet. I figure I’m the only guy who has been to the highest point of Earth and down 180 feet deep.

1. That’s quite a perspective. How do you think outdoor gear has changed since you climbed Everest 50 years ago?

J.W.: The biggest change is the boots. We wore three layers of leather. And they got wet. So for two months we were in wet leather boots, and we’d have to take them into our sleeping bags because they’d freeze like rock.

Now they are plastic so they don’t get wet—oh what a difference! They are half the weight of our boots. And can you imagine the difference? Every step you take, and we took thousands of steps, is lighter and your feet are dry, for God’s sake. That’s a big change.

Actually Eddie Bauer made such good clothing. And down hasn’t changed, but now they are putting it into lighter covers and lighter fabric. But down is the best insulation. You look at the birds, and they are flying in zero weather and they are flying in warmer temperatures. And it works. It’s really good stuff. There are some little changes, the ice ax shapes and crampons are a little better. There’s now some synthetics. But up on Everest it was always so cold, it was a dry cold, so you didn’t need to put a waterproof frabric on the outside on your down parka.

A: Why do you think it’s important for us to remember the 1963 American Everest Expedition 50 years later?

J.W.: The team, going over there and putting the American flag on the highest point on the planet, that was a big deal—and not just among mountain climbers, though I think they were happy about it. At that time, in the 60s, we had a lot going on. MLK was shot and five months after we climbed Everest John F. Kennedy was killed. The 1960s were turbulent. And that’s why I think our 50 year anniversary is good to look back and see, Hey, we were doing some pretty good stuff in those days.

A: Your expedition is credited with inspiring Americans to get interested in the outdoors. Do you agree?

J.W.: I have heard that a lot. People come up and say, “You actually started me in mountain climbing and in getting out.” So yeah, that’s another good thing. And if they get out there they see, son of a bitch, this is a beautiful planet.

A: How about Everest today? Is there one thing you would change about it?

J.W.: I think they are going to have to limit the climbers on the mountain. And you hope that the guide services over there are not just doing it for money and are cautious enough and smart enough to handle their climbs carefully. If you’ve been given $65,000 and this guy wants to climb it, you really feel obligated. But you gotta know when to turn back. If you climb a few mountains before you go, then you learn the mountain will still be there. And it’s good to turn back sometimes.

There are now three guide services on Rainier, but they all have limitations. They can only take 25 clients a day up on the mountain. So it limits the number of people who are going up and down. And I think they are going to have to do that on Everest because it get incredibly dangerous.

Leif, my son, waited for an hour up there, because there are several narrow sections that are a bottleneck, and people are stumbling down and so forth. So there are going to have to be some controls. There are people from all over the world who want to climb it. I think there is going to have to be some kind of reservation system.

A: What’s something surprising about you?

J.W.: I love ice cream. I like a mix of vanilla and mint chocolate chip. Isn’t that good?

And I love my wife, and these days that’s a little unusual. We just had our 30th anniversary. We’re an endangered species.

A: Playing devil’s advocate here: Why does it matter if people feel connected to the outdoors or not?

J.W.: If children, and then as adults, know a little bit about nature or get out into it, then they really like it. And then they’ll really develop a love for it. And if they love it, they will take care of it. Mother Earth needs a little taking care of. People need to get out of those concrete, brick, and glass canyons of the cities. If they enjoy the outdoors then they’ll pass that love on to their children and on to their children’s children. You don’t vote for something that you don’t know.

A: How do we get more kids and people outdoors?

J.W.: Your National Geographic television programs are good because they show nature, and people might look at that and say, I’d like to do that. I think the Boy Scouts were always good. But I don’t think they do a lot in the outdoors in the big cities. Central Park in New York City is amazing. And the New York Times has done some really good stuff trying to get the little local lots to turn them into natural areas. Just a little vacant lot can become a place where kids can see what trees are. I bet they can’t even name two different kinds of trees.

In the past, that was our life. That was what we did. You just don’t want to lose that. I think if you can bring some nature into the city, fine, but if you can’t, you’re going to have to get the kids out. There are a lot of outdoor programs that get people out. And then educating them through magazines and stuff like that. Ed Viesturs, who has climbed all the 8,000-meter peaks, was motivated by reading a couple books as a kid. So books and magazines, we gotta educate them.

I’m leaving it to you, Mary Anne. You have to educate the bastards. You wonder how are we going to save the planet, right?

Who reached the top of Mount Everest?

Sir Edmund Percival Hillary KG ONZ KBE (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest.

Who was the first person to attempt Mount Everest?

Who was the first person tried to climb Mount Everest? The first summit attempt was made by Mallory and Irvine as they set off from the North Col (C-4) in 1924. From the west the North Col was reached for the first time in 1938 when Everest expedition was undertaken by British mountaineering explorer Bill Tilman.

Who was the first American team to summit Mount Everest?

In 1963, Jim Whittaker became the first American to reach the 29,029-foot summit of Mount Everest. The renowned mountain climber also helped launch the outdoor equipment company REI into the multibillion-dollar business it is today.

Who was the second person to climb Mount Everest?

First to summit a certain number of times.